Classic Mystery

The story opens with the apparently accidental drowning of a sixth form student in the Norfolk countryside. As a matter of routine, or so it seems, the case passes across the desk of Detective Sergeant Smith, recently returned to work after an internal investigation into another case that has led to tensions between officers at Kings Lake police headquarters. As an ex-DCI, Smith could have retired by now, and it is clear that some of his superiors wish that he would do so.

Published in instalments in 1859, The Woman in White is often considered to be one of the very first detective novels. Although critics weren’t impressed at the time, the novel proved to be a hit with the public and has since gone on to become one of the timeless classics of the Victorian era. Following the adventures of Walter Hartright, this is a story of sleuthing, inheritance, ghosts and mistaken identity and was recently the subject of a hit TV adaptation by the BBC.

The story begins when two poets meet. Gabriel Syme is a poet of law. Lucian Gregory is a poetic anarchist. As the poets protest their respective philosophies, they strike a challenge. In the ruckus that ensues, the Central European Council of Anarchists elects Syme to the post of Thursday, one of their seven chief council positions. Undercover. On the run, Syme meets with Sunday, the head of the council, a man so outrageously mysterious that his antics confound both the law-abiding and the anarchist.

Ever since he made his first appearance in A Study In Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes has enthralled and delighted millions of fans throughout the world. Now Audible is proud to present Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, read by Stephen Fry. A lifelong fan of Doyle's detective fiction, Fry has narrated the definitive collection of Sherlock Holmes - four novels and four collections of short stories. And, exclusively for Audible, Stephen has written and narrated eight insightful introductions, one for each title.

Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is summoned to France after receiving a distressing letter with a urgent cry for help. Upon his arrival in Merlinville-sur-Mer, the investigator finds the man who penned the letter, the South American millionaire Monsieur Renauld, stabbed to death and his body flung into a freshly dug open grave on the golf course adjoining the property. Meanwhile the millionaire's wife is found bound and gagged in her room. Apparently, it seems that Renauld and his wife were victims of a failed break-in, resulting in Renauld's kidnapping and death.

After a routine delivery, midwife Sarah Brandt visits her patient in a rooming house and finds that another boarder, a young girl, has been killed. At the request of sergeant Frank Malloy, she searches the girl's room and discovers that the victim is from one of the most prominent families in New York - and the sister of an old friend. The powerful family, fearful of scandal, refuses to permit an investigation. But with Malloy's help, Sarah begins a dangerous quest to bring the killer to justice before death claims another victim.

The Thin Man introduces Nick and Nora Charles, New York's coolest crime-solving couple. Nick retired from detecting after his wife inherited a tidy sum, but six years later a pretty blonde spies him at a speakeasy and asks for his help finding her father, an eccentric inventor who was once Nick's client. Nick can no more resist the case than a morning cocktail or a good fight, and soon he and Nora are caught in a complicated web of confused identities.

Tommy Beresford and Prudence "Tuppence" Cowley are young, in love...and flat broke. Just after Great War, there are few jobs available, and the couple is desperately short of money. Restless for excitement, they decide to embark on a daring business scheme: Young Adventurers Ltd. - "willing to do anything, go anywhere".

In the peace and tranquility of the woods at Pinehills on a Saturday afternoon, a mobile phone begins to ring. The phone belongs to DC Smith, and it isn't unusual that the call is from Kings Lake Central police station; what is unusual is the fact that he seems to be the subject of an investigation rather than taking part in one. What can the links be between a prisoner's violent death in another county, the disappearance of two teenagers, and the highest profile case in Kings Lake for many years?

New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King enjoys immense popularity and a resounding chorus of critical acclaim for her exquisite mysteries. The God of the Hive continues the thread King began in The Language of Bees, in which Mary Russell and her famous husband, Sherlock Holmes, face trouble with Scotland Yard and the deadliest of adversaries.

Ellison Russell is planning the event of the season - and she's stressed. Why not yoga? Because the yoga instructor gets murdered during class - and Ellison's stress level rises exponentially. Now, in addition to raising a ridiculous amount of money, she's babysitting a deranged cat (named after the devil himself), taking 10 million phone calls (most of them from Mother), and finding more bodies (they're popping up like dandelions after a spring rain). There's no such thing as balance when the killer makes it personal. Can Ellison catch a murderer or will her next namaste be her last?

Leo Tolstoy's classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.

When Mordecai Tremaine emerges from the train station, murder is the last thing on his mind. But he has never been able to resist anything in the nature of a mystery - and a mystery is precisely what awaits him in the village of Dalmering. Rehearsals for the local amateur dramatic production are in progress. When the star of the show is found dead, the spotlight falls on Mordecai, whose reputation in the field of crime-solving precedes him.

Two weeks of rest and recuperation - that's what the doctor ordered. Detective Sergeant DC Smith could listen to some music, make some of his own, and maybe even catch up on his reading; he is almost looking forward to it. And then there is a knock on the door. It's only his next-door neighbor, but it is the beginning of a sequence of events that will bring him face to face with some of the darkest episodes and the most dangerous people from his own past.

It is 1969 and Glasgow is in the grip of the worst winter in decades, yet it is something else that has Glaswegians on edge: a serial killer whose name alone is enough to make them tremble with fear. The Quaker has killed another victim, snatching a young woman from a nightclub and dumping her body like trash in the back of a cold-water tenement. He leaves no clues, and the investigation has led police down one blind alley after another.

Dashiell Hammett is best known as both pioneer and master of American hard-boiled detective fiction, but these dozen and a half stories both affirm that reputation and present him in a different light. Along with the full-length treatments On the Make and The Kiss-Off, this collection includes never before and rarely published stories that explore failed romance, courage in the face of uncertainty, hypocrisy, and crass opportunism.

An honest policeman, Sergeant Wigan, escorts a drunk man home one night to keep him out of trouble and, seeing his fine book collection, slowly falls into the gentle art of book collecting. Just as the friendship is blossoming, the policeman's book-collecting friend is murdered. To solve the mystery of why the victim was killed, and which of his rare books was taken, Wigan dives into the world of 'runners' and book collectors, where avid agents will gladly cut you for a first edition and then offer you a lift home afterwards.

A devastating terrorist attack in the heart of Washington, DC, and the arrest of the terrorist leads to a trial that threatens to expose the dark underbelly of America's national security. The Russian president is gravely injured and fixated on revenge, while a gay Russian dissident is arrested and put on trial in Judge Tom Brewer's courtroom. With the world's attention fixed on Tom and this case, secrets from his past explode during the course of the trial, which place him at the very center of the case and make him the only man who can try to stop the world's slide into war.

Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl from Dardanelle, Arkansas, sets out to avenge her Daddy who was shot to death by a no-good outlaw. Mattie convinces one-eyed "Rooster" Cogburn, the meanest U.S. marshal in the land, to ride along with her. In True Grit, we have a true American classic, as young Mattie, as vital as she is innocent, outdickers and outmaneuvers the hard-bitten men of the trail in a legend that will last through the ages.

On a rocky beach in the southwest of Ireland, the body of Jimmy O’Reilly, sixty-nine years old and dressed in a suit and his dancing shoes, is propped on a boulder, staring sightlessly out to sea. A cryptic message is spelled out next to the body with sixty-nine polished black stones and a discarded vial of deadly veterinarian medication lies nearby. Jimmy was a wealthy racehorse owner, known far and wide as The Dancing Man. In a town like Dingle, everyone knows a little something about everyone else. But dig a bit deeper, and there’s always much more to find.